Numerous Early Comers 



gardener need be, for so constantly begging bits of it 

 from more successful growers. Now I weed it up as 

 well as supplying all who come. Douglasia Vitaliana 

 never lived here long enough to make it worth while 

 looking up its synonyms, so as to make up my mind 

 whether to call it Aretia, Androsace, Gregoria, Primula, 

 Macrotybus or Vitaliana primuloides, for it has received a 

 new name almost as often as it has died under my tender 

 care. After a year in the fish hatchery it has spread 

 into a grey mat and flowered this Spring almost as solidly 

 as it does on Mont Cenis, and I have turned its history up 

 in Pax and Knuth's Primulaceae volume of Das Pflanzenreich, 

 and hope it will live here as long as it shall remain a 

 Douglasia, for surely no one will dare alter the genera as 

 settled by that redoubtable pair during my time. Of 

 course one must always discount such successes by 

 realising that many plants will flourish in newly-disturbed 

 soil for a season or two and then either render it un- 

 suitable for them or they themselves grow sick of it. 

 Linaria alpina is an instance of this ; even in the Alps it is 

 only on landslides or new earthworks that one finds it in 

 profusion. I have even seen it on a heap of grit that 

 had been left by the roadside after a part of it had been 

 used for mixing cement for a new house. Here it will 

 always thrive in a newly-constructed bit of rock garden, 

 and after a year or two refuse to grow even if carefully 

 sown. But to see Soldanellas, Primula frondosa, and the 

 alpine form of Parnassia palustris, growing in apparently 

 dry sand, and a little way below Lewisia Howelliis salmon 

 and orange-coloured flowers contrasting deliciously with 

 that exquisite gem of Campanulas called C. caespitosa 

 109 



